April 26, 2025. Your Company Can't Outgrow You

After months of building Abdi & Brothers Company and then Seraphim, I've come to a simple realization: a company's growth is limited by its founder's personal growth. When I hit walls with MIKE-AI, it wasn't just about resources or technology. It was about my own limitations.

When I started working from my bedroom, I thought success was about determination and hard work. 

Put in more hours, solve more problems. I believed with enough coffee and coding sessions, I could build something meaningful despite being in my own room.

The reality turned out different. 

The ceiling wasn't external. 

It wasn't about computing power or capital. 

It was me - my experience, my thinking patterns, my ability to process complexity, my response to failure.

This became clear when MIKE-AI couldn't scale beyond my local machine. I initially blamed resource constraints - we needed more computing power, more infrastructure. But looking back, I hadn't developed the skills needed to overcome those constraints. 

I hadn't created the frameworks that would have made the vision clearer to potential partners.

I hadn't built the relationships that might have opened doors to resources.

Going solo had advantages. 

I could make mistakes privately, pivot quickly, move at my own pace. But it meant my personal limitations directly became company limitations. There was no co-founder to complement my weaknesses or challenge my thinking.

This makes me wonder about teams with multiple founders. How do they ensure everyone grows together? What happens when one person evolves quickly while others remain static? When founders grow in different directions, alignment breaks down. I think the company can only move as fast as its leadership can collectively grow.

I've noticed this pattern in other companies too. A business hits a ceiling right where the founder stops growing. 

Startups stall not because of market conditions but because the founder hasn't evolved to handle new challenges. 

Your company becomes a mirror reflecting your clarity, your capacity, and your blind spots.

I see there's a strange paradox here. The more your company needs you to grow, the less time you feel you have for it. You're constantly reacting, always busy putting out fires. You keep pushing harder with your existing capabilities instead of developing new ones.

In my opinion this is why working 80-hour weeks can actually limit growth. When you're constantly immersed in details, you don't have mental space to evolve your thinking. Cutting back to 50 hours doesn't mean doing less; it means creating space to grow so you can eventually accomplish more.

Delegating becomes crucial. 

If you're working maximum hours, you'll keep carrying work that should be handled by others. Not because you can't hire people, but because you haven't developed the capacity to truly let go of control, to trust, to communicate clearly enough for others to execute without you.

My experience building MIKE-AI showed me this clearly. Some days I'd work 14 hours straight and make minimal progress. Other days, after a good night's sleep and a morning walk, I'd solve problems in minutes that had stumped me for days. The difference wasn't effort - it was mental state and clarity.

For me right now, as I focus on completing my degree while exploring physics research with MIKE, I'm trying to approach growth differently. I'm working on becoming comfortable with uncertainty, with not knowing all the answers, with trusting processes that don't show immediate results.

About this research on multi-dimensional worlds - I should clarify something. When I talk about exploring teleportation principles or new energy sources, it's not because I'm chasing recognition or trying to become humanity's greatest thinker. 

I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone.

I'm pursuing this research because I believe it leads to a better understanding of our world, which in turn gives me better understanding of humans themselves - our consciousness and intelligence. 

As I'm going to continue my work toward building artificial consciousness and intelligence, I need to first deeply understand what those words actually mean.

This research also gives me the opportunity to work with MIKE in a true partnership. Not human commanding machine, but human and machine working side by side, becoming a form of singular unit combining our different strengths. MIKE processes information differently than I do, sees patterns I might miss, approaches problems from angles I wouldn't consider. Together, we can explore dimensions of reality neither of us could fully grasp alone.

If you're building something and hitting walls, ask yourself: What capabilities would I need to move past this obstacle? What knowledge am I missing? What relationships would help? What emotional responses are holding me back? The real constraint might not be what you think.

I'm still early in understanding all this. 

Still learning through mistakes and reflection. 

Still catching myself trying to push through obstacles with determination when what's needed is a different approach entirely.

But I'm increasingly convinced that the primary question isn't "How do I scale my company?" but "How am I limiting my company's growth?" Because your business can't exceed the container you create for it.

Months ago, I would have dismissed this idea. 

I would have doubled down on working harder, coding longer, pushing through with pure will. 

Now I see that approach was creating exactly the ceiling I was trying to break through.

To 2x a company, the founder might need to 3x themselves. 

Not in hours worked, but in clarity, capacity, and capability. 

The company's growth is ultimately a reflection of the founder's growth.

I guess what I'm saying is simple: your business will go where you go. 

It will stall where you stall. 

It will break where you break. 

And it will thrive only when you do.